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Your body runs on bioelectricity. Cells are designed to run in an environment of -20 to -25 millivolts. To repair and heal, cells need an environment of -50 millivolts

Inadequate voltage is a characteristic of all chronic disease. Either you do not have the necessary voltage to run the cells, or the higher voltage needed to make new cells

To heal, you need the proper voltage. You also need all of the necessary raw materials (nutrients) required to make new cells and address any toxins that might damage cells as fast as you make them

By Dr. Mercola

Your body runs on bioelectricity, and having a deeper understanding of how it works can be quite helpful when it comes to optimizing your health. Natural health pioneer Dr. Jerry Tennant has written an excellent book on this topic called "Healing Is Voltage: The Handbook."

The Electric Brain

Trained as an ophthalmologist, Tennant transitioned into natural health as a result of being forced to solve his own health challenges. After doing laser eye surgery on a patient with leukemia, Tennant ended up developing encephalitis. He believes the virus, which is not killed by laser, traveled from the patient's cornea, through the mask, up through his nose into his brain. He was forced to quit work in November 1995, and spent the next seven years bedridden, without hope for recovery.

"I went to the best doctors I could find in New York, Boston and so forth. They all said, 'Well, sorry. You have three viruses in your brain. We don't know what to do about it. Don't call us. We'll call you.' I had two or three hours a day in which I could understand the newspaper. Then like a light switch, it would go off and I couldn't understand it anymore. During those two or three hours that I could think, I realized I had to figure out how to get myself well, because no one else was going to do it.

I had the idea that if I could figure out how to make one cell work, I could make them all work, because although they look different, they really all have the same component parts. They just have different software. I began to read cellular biology books … One of the things that resonated with me was that … cells must run at a pH between 7.35 and 7.45. I didn't really know what that meant, except it was something about acid-base balance.

I began to try to understand pH. I began to realize that pH is the name given to voltage in a liquid. If you think about the voltage that runs electric lights or a computer, that's called conductive electricity. That means electrons are moving along copper wires. But in a liquid, you have a different situation. A liquid can either be an electron donor or an electron stealer.

By convention, if the liquid … is an electron stealer, you put a plus sign in front of the voltage. If it's an electron donor, you put a minus sign in front of it. You take a sophisticated volt meter called a pH meter and put it in the liquid. It will actually read out in voltage; minus 400 millivolts of electron donor is the same thing as pH of 14. Plus 400 millivolts of electron stealer is the same as a pH of zero. Of course, if it's neutral, it's a pH of 7."

Healing Requires Double the Voltage

A pH meter can give you a reading of either pH or millivolts. It's actually easier to understand what's going on if you use millivolts. A pH of 7.35 equates to -20 millivolts of electron donor. A pH of 7.45 is -25 millivolts of electron donor. Cells are designed to run in an environment of -20 to -25 millivolts.

People get confused because if you measure across a cell membrane you get about minus 90 millivolts. But the environment is designed to be -20 to -25 millivolts.

"That was a critical piece of my understanding to begin to understand how to get myself well," Tennant says (who, by the way, turned 77 this past June and still enjoys healthy mental faculties and goes to work every day). To repair and heal, on the other hand, cells need an environment of -50 millivolts. In other words, you need double the normal voltage to repair or replace damaged cells.

"Dr. Hiroki Nakatani in Japan was the first person to use modern electronics to measure acupuncture meridians. He published his work in 1951. Dr. Reinhard Voll in Germany did similar work and published it in 1952. I was able to get Nakatani's rather rudimentary device (an ohmmeter) and found that my brain was running somewhere between 2 and 4 millivolts, instead of the 25 that it needed to run and the 50 it needed to repair.

Now, it was obvious why it didn't work," he says. "Understanding that my brain didn't have enough voltage to work correctly, that was really what started me on the journey of trying to figure out how to get things to work again."

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Chronic Disease Is the Result of Failure to Make Functional Cells

First, he came across work by a Russian doctor named Alexander Karasev, who had identified a waveform that can transfer electrons to cell membranes. He was able to acquire a SCENAR device developed by Karasev and began to treat himself with it. Years later, he developed his own Biomodulator device.1

"As I began to recognize that the body had to have energy, the other big change in my paradigm was when I finally understood that the body is constantly wearing itself out and having to make new cells. You get new cones in the macula of your eye every 48 hours. The lining of the gut is replaced every three days. The skin that you and I are sitting in today is only 6 weeks old. Your liver's 8 weeks old. Your nervous system's 8 months old.

One of the things I began to realize then is that chronic disease only occurs when you lose the ability to make new cells that work. [By extension], if you say that you must have a cell that works, that cell must contain functional mitochondria. But the mitochondria are not going to work if the cell membranes don't work.

It's the total unit that you have to have working. It's sort of like having a brand-new car. If it doesn't have a transmission, even though you've got the rest of it there, it's not going to work. You have to have the whole thing … Cells actually have four battery packs. The mitochondria are only one of those battery packs. You want them all to be functional."

In a nutshell, inadequate voltage is a characteristic of all chronic disease. Either you do not have the necessary voltage to run the cells, or the higher voltage needed to make new cells. So, to heal, you need the proper voltage. You also need all of the necessary raw materials (nutrients) required to make new cells and address any toxins that might damage cells as fast as you make them.

Body Electric — The Human Battery System

According to Tennant, there are four major battery systems in the human body that make cells work. The largest is your muscle battery. Your muscles are piezoelectric, which means that when you engage your muscles, electrons are emitted. In a way, your muscles act like rechargeable batteries, so while they emit electrons, they also store them.

To recharge the "battery pack" in your muscles, all you need to do is move and exercise. In summary, the four battery systems found in the human body are as follows. All of these battery systems must be functional for cells to work correctly:

1. Muscle battery pack — Your muscles are stacked one on top of the other in a specific order (much like batteries in a flashlight) to form a power pack. Each organ has its own battery pack, which is a stack of muscle batteries. According to Tennant, each stack of muscle batteries corresponds to an acupuncture meridian.

The muscle batteries are surrounded by fascia, which acts as a semiconductor — an arranged metabolic molecule designed to move electrons at the speed of light, but only in one direction. Together, the muscle stack and the surrounding fascia serve as the wiring system for your body, carrying the voltage from the muscle battery inside, out through the fascia and to the appropriate organ.

2. Cell membrane capacitor — Cell membranes are composed of fats called phospholipids, shaped like a circle with two "legs." The circle is an electron conductor and the legs are insulators. They're stacked together so that you have two conductors separated by an insulator, which is the definition of a capacitor.

The difference between a capacitor and a regular battery is when a capacitor discharges, it discharges all of its charge whereas a battery discharges slowly. So, each cell membrane acts like a small battery (capacitor), which is continuously fed electrons from the muscle battery packs.

3. ADP/ATP battery — Inside each cell is yet another rechargeable battery system called adenosine diphosphate/adenosine triphosphate (ADP/ATP). When this battery is charged up, it's called ATP. When the battery's discharged, it's called ADP. Because it's a rechargeable battery system, there's a type of battery charger inside of the cell as well. We call that Krebs cycle, or the citric acid cycle.

The citric acid cycle prefers fatty acids. When sufficient oxygen is available, for every unit of fatty acid you put into the citric acid cycle, you get enough electrons to charge up 38 ATP batteries. If oxygen is unavailable, for every unit of fatty acids you put into the citric acid cycle you only get enough electrons to charge up two of those batteries.

Hence, when oxygen drops, this ADP/ATP battery system becomes very inefficient. "It's like a car that goes from 38 miles a gallon to 2 miles a gallon," Tennant says.

4. The DNA battery — Lastly, there's DNA. The DNA molecule measures 34 by 21 angstroms per double helix cycle.2 The ratio of these numbers is very close to phi and is known as the golden section or golden mean. "Anytime you have something that's a golden mean and expose it to scalar energy … scalar energy implodes into the center and becomes the power supply for DNA," Tennant says.

Fifth Energy System — Structured Water

A fifth system that holds and delivers energy is structured water — negatively charged water found in your cells and extracellular tissues. Typical tap water is H2O, but this fourth phase is actually H3O2. It's more viscous, more ordered and more alkaline than regular water, and the refractive index (optical property) of this water is about 10 percent higher than ordinary water. Its density is also about 10 percent higher and, as mentioned, it has a negative charge (negative electrical potential).

This may provide the answer as to why human cells are negatively charged. Tennant does not go into structured water here, but it's a whole additional component that also plays an important role in health and disease. In summary, the way you recharge this structured water is through sunlight. Sun exposure structures the water in your body, which provides greater energy. To learn more about this, please review "Water Supports Health in Ways You May Never Have Suspected."

What Cells Require for Proper Function

As mentioned, chronic disease is characterized by low voltage. The obvious question then becomes, why won't the battery packs hold a charge? Here, a number of factors can come into play. Among the most important are:

• Thyroid hormones — The thyroid hormone T3 controls the voltage of cell membranes while T2 controls the voltage of the mitochondria. Hence, you need adequate T3 and T2 for things to work. "What I find is that basic to all chronic diseases is that you have to make sure you get the thyroid piece right, because if you don't, then nothing else tends to work correctly," Tennant says.

"One of the problems is doctors are trained to look at thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and sometimes T4. But TSH and T4 could be normal, but if you don't have the cofactors that it takes to convert T4 to T3, you're still hypothyroid at the cell level."

• Dental infections — As mentioned, voltage runs from the muscle battery out through the fascia to the organs. On the way, each muscle battery pack or meridian runs through a specific tooth. There are acupuncture meridian charts showing which meridian corresponds to which tooth.

According to Tennant, teeth act like circuit breakers, so if you have an infection in a tooth, it will lower the voltage, eventually turning the voltage off in that circuit. When that happens, the organs powered by that particular circuit will begin to malfunction.

• Scars — According to Tennant, scars can significantly inhibit or drain voltage. To treat scars, Tennant uses essential oils in combination with his proprietary device called the Biomodulator/Biotransducer. "Just put the Biotransducer over [the scar] until you feel the magnetic fields go away. That opens up the scar and now the voltage goes through it," he says. "It takes about three minutes and works great."

Emotions Create Distorted Magnetic Fields That Lower Voltage

"If you put a magnetic field in one of the body's circuits, it simply blocks the flow of electrons. So, what we found is that one of the most important things that start chronic disease is actually emotions. You can identify these emotional magnetic fields in a variety of different ways.

Work by Eileen McKusick and others have shown we're all surrounded by this magnetic field. It goes out about 5 feet … [One of the things McKusick taught is you can take a tuning fork, strike it and you'll hear it hum.

As you move it through the field, when it hits one of these areas of emotional distortion, its pitch goes deeper. You can actually hear it. If you can put a pendulum right where you find it, you'll see the pendulum spins counter-clockwise if there's an emotional distortion there. It spins clockwise if there isn't."

To erase the aberrant magnetic fields caused by negative emotions, Tennant applies a stronger magnetic field using his Biomodulator, which not only can transfer electrons but also put out a variety of waveforms, including scalar energy.

Treating Macular Degeneration

Today, Tennant no longer practices general ophthalmology. The only eye problems he treats are macular degeneration and glaucoma, using voltage-based techniques. The macula is on the stomach meridian. "The reason people get macular degeneration is that they lose the minus 50 millivolts they need to make new cells every 48 hours," he says. "As those cells wear out, they can't get replacements."

To address it, you need to determine why there's deficient voltage in the stomach meridian. You also need to make sure you're giving your body all the materials needed to replace those macular cells. Nerve cells are 50 percent cholesterol by weight, so it's nearly impossible to reverse macular degeneration if you're on a statin drug, as you will not have enough cholesterol in your system.

Other important nutrients are animal-based omega-3 fats and fulvic acid, typically sold as "fulvic trace minerals," which provides vitamins, minerals and amino acids.

"Fulvic acid is a primary control of cell membranes because it's one of the few substances that can be either plus or minus, as it needs to be," Tennant explains. "When we take that, it provides the things we need. Of course, there's research coming out now that shows not only does it correct mineral deficiencies, but it begins to help with the way our intestinal cells interlock, and so on.

Also, fulvic acid is a great way to get rid of heavy metals because [it goes] inside the cell, grabs the metal, pulls it out, hands it off to the humic, which then takes it out of your body. In intravenous chelation, the chelating materials can only get to extracellular things, because they won't go inside the cells where almost all the metals reside."

Astaxanthin, a potent antioxidant, can also be quite beneficial. Since the macula replaces itself every 48 hours, people with dry macular degeneration may start noticing results in as little as three or four days, provided you've addressed the nutritional component as well. In many cases, Tennant has been able to restore vision to within the normal reading range.

Wet macular degeneration is more difficult, as the bleeding causes scarring and new cells cannot eliminate the scar. In these cases, the goal is to stabilize the disease and prevent further deterioration.

Treating Glaucoma

To treat glaucoma, you have to treat the liver/gallbladder circuit, as the optic nerve is on the liver/gallbladder meridian. "The optic nerve replaces itself every eight months if it has the 50 millivolts to do it," he says. "What you'll find in every glaucoma patient is that the polarity in the liver meridian has dropped down past zero, so it's an electron stealer instead of an electron donor."

You also need to treat the sympathetic system, which controls lymphatics, because the outflow channel of your eye is part of the lymphatic system. So, "to fix glaucoma, you look at both the sympathetic and parasympathetic and figure out why that's not balanced, and then you fix the liver/gallbladder circuit," Tennant says. Since it takes eight months to replace the optic nerve, it takes longer to notice results when treating glaucoma. Also, you're also more likely to merely stabilize the disease than reverse it.

More Information

If you've enjoyed this conversation, I would strongly encourage you to join us at the ACIM conference in Orlando, Florida, November 2 through 4. The event is being held at the Florida Conference and Hotel Center. Both Tennant and I, along with many other outstanding speakers, like Steven Sinatra, Jonathon Wright and Lee Cowden, all of whom I have previously interviewed, will be there. You can see the rest of the amazing speakers on the ACIM event page.

If you are a physician and are interested in learning about how you can use the ketogenic diet and other therapies for cancer, heart disease, Lyme and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, please be sure and come. If you are a patient, there will be a separate and less expensive track on the same date and location. However, you will need to come back to this page at a later date, as the registration page for the event is still unavailable.

To learn more about how body voltage dictates health and disease, be sure to pick up a copy of Tennant's book, "Healing Is Voltage: The Handbook." You can also learn more on his website, TennantInstitute.com. There you'll also find contact information for his Dallas-based clinic.

"Again, you have to do everything it takes to make new cells work. The voltage piece is basic. If you don't do that, then nothing works. Even if you eat a perfect diet but don't have voltage in the digestive system, you're still starving to death. You have to have the voltage. You have to have the nutrition. You have to deal with the toxins. You have to do all of those," Tennant says.

Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked. The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.

If you want to use an article on your site please click here. This content may be copied in full, with copyright, contact, creation and information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Dr. Mercola is required.

Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked. The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.

If you want to use an article on your site please click here. This content may be copied in full, with copyright, contact, creation and information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Dr. Mercola is required.